I've always been sort of a late bloomer. This on top of being the youngest added sort of a stunted childhood and early adulthood. In fact of the ones that went, my siblings finished college before I finished high school. Eventually it became easy to swallow that they, with their five or more year head start on life, would be difficult to compete with so I tried to catch up by being the "good" kid. They would never say it out loud, but I'm my parent's favorite. (If you take into consideration how much grief I gave them on average, I think I win.) But when the rest had grown out of the angst ridden teenage years and started to bring the babies to visit, I knew I no perfect report cards could compare. Ask my oldest niece (or more appropriately, anyone else around with a decent memory) and you'll find out that I wasn't particularly nice to her. I hated not being the youngest and cutest. (Confession: I don't think I was never the cutest, but still.) I told my mom that she's have to wait about thirteen years, then we'd have something in common.
Strangely it took about ten and after years of therapy I discovered that in addition to losing attention, I didn't like that she brought back the yelling version of discipline in our house. When you're the good kid, you just internalize your dissatisfaction and do what it takes to make your parents proud of you. The older ones didn't and I was having flashbacks of that horrible look from my parents that someone was in trouble. Now that I've shared a brief history of what seems like irrelevant information, allow me to continue.
Little children running around made sense with my by many years older siblings. But now I'm at the age where little ones running around by my peers is the norm. Five years earlier, I would cast it off as whatever, I have college to finish. Then college was over and my friends ventured off into a new world. When one of my greatest friends got married, came back from her honeymoon and told me she was pregnant, that was a happy moment filled with a huge slap upside my head of discovery. It isn't just the, for lack of nicer way of putting it, skanks from high school getting knocked up. This is my wonderful girlfriend adding a new generation of nerds to the world. She wanted kids and after finishing school, getting married and building a home, went for it.
I still had some goals to get to her level of readiness, so that was just happy times for her adventure. I got to meet her son, saw him get baptized and it was so great to see the first of my adult friends take this step. Then she called me up and told me she was pregnant again. I heard the news and was incredibly excited for her. This was amazing. She told me the details and I was mesmerized by what she was doing. Again, she was pinpointing what she wanted and was making it her reality.
When I got off the phone, I started to cry. And what made it worse is that I could see it played out in an episode of Friends. (Let's go to the clip. Ignore the pettiness of "Thunder" and being the center of attention and you have my life at that moment. But she was having her second child and I was still not married yet. Also, I would never ruin another person's special night. It has come up before recently, but for crap's sake, I'm not seventeen anymore.)
This was about two years ago. Since then I've married my long time boyfriend and bought a home and I still have days where I feel empty. I've been lucky that I haven't been hounded by family as to when I'm having kids. My parents already have five grand kids and my mother-in-law said she's in no hurry. (Whether or not that's true has yet to be seen.) I'm not ready and honestly, I don't know if I am capable of dealing with the pain. There. I said it.
Well, this would be easy to deal with, but my best friend is pregnant. I always assumed she's have kids before me. She's more nurturing and likes kids more than I do. (I know I like kids that I have a connection to. Family and friends have great kids most of the time. Other kids need to stay away from me.) I'm helping her other best friend throw a baby shower for her and I'm excited and happy for her. But again, the lingering sadness for me is not far behind.
It's natural that when we get together, the conversation would be about pregnancy and little ones. I'm not part of this club, so I have little to contribute. I need to find others who are childless, quick. Then I started down the list of good childless friends. They will understand my life, right?
Door Number One: Married seven years no kids yet.
"No, I want kids, but I'm waiting until my husband figures out a few career choices. I can't wait to have kids."
Door Number Two: Together twelve years getting married in June.
"Oh yeah, once we're married, we'll have kids really soon."
Door Number Three: Married three years & pursuing Master's Degree
"Yeah, we'll probably get started after I finish up this degree."
That's it. And Facebook is cursing me with the ones that aren't married and happily announcing the news of their bundles of joy. I was in Babies R Us yesterday and nearly had a panic attack. My brain went into dark places and started to curse the white trash looking people who weren't smart enough to find the giant sign that said "Registry" who will soon be having little morons running around.
Calm Happy Place. And who would have though a self described "Entertainment Junkie" would have a movie moment from When Harry Met Sally that can help describe this pain?
Sally: And Joe and I used to talk about it, and we'd say we were so lucky we have this wonderful relationship, we can have sex on the kitchen floor and not worry about the kids walking in. We can fly off to Rome on a moment's notice. And then one day I was taking Alice's little girl for the afternoon because I'd promised to take her to the circus, and we were in the cab playing "I Spy" - I spy a mailbox, I spy a lamp-post - and she looked out the window and she saw this man and this woman with these two little kids. And the man had one of the little kids on his shoulders, and she said, "I spy a family." And I started to cry. You know, I just started crying. And I went home, and I said, "The thing is, Joe, we never do fly off to Rome on a moment's notice."
Harry: And the kitchen floor?
Sally: [sadly] Not once. It's this very cold, hard Mexican ceramic tile.
It isn't that I want kids now. It isn't our time. Sadly, biology is designed that my time is running out. But I'm not sad because I want kids. In my moments of pettiness, I want to be living this fly off to Rome, sex on the kitchen floor life. And don't even drink so can't abuse my body like there isn't a life inside depending on it. No, this sadness is familiar to the one I had watching my siblings getting degrees while I still had to pass third year Spanish. It's compounded by the fact that those around me didn't have a five year head start. I'm being left behind and I hate it.
